HISTORY/WRITING FINAL ESSAY

TOPIC 3: POLICING
DOCUMENT PACKET

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Civil Rights Movement

1. The Ugly History of Racist Policing in the US - http://www.vox.com/michael-brown-shooting-

ferguson-mo/2014/8/19/6031759/ferguson-history-riots-police-brutality-civil-rights
2. Bull Connor Biography -
3. Police Brutality in the US

Modern Day
4. Baltimore’s Broken Relationship With Police - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/us/baltimores-
broken-relationship-with-police.html?_r=1
5. Freddie Gray Not The First to Come out of Police Van with Injury -
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-
story.html#page=1
6. What we Know About Who Police Kill - http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6051043/how-many-people-
killed-police-statistics-homicide-official-black

Topic 3: Policing Essay Questions

(Your essay must answer all of these questions with specific evidence taken from these documents/History
class discussions!!!)

What is the relationship between civilians (people) and police in urban areas, historically?
How does this compare to modern day?
Does the relationship need to change, why/why not?
Use past events as well as current events to support your argument.

NAME: __________________________________________

HOMEROOM: ____________________________________

DOCUMENT 1:
The ugly history of racist policing in America
by Vox
The death of Freddie Gray while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department has led to civil
unrest in the city. What's happening in Baltimore right now is reminiscent of the unrest in Ferguson,
MO last summer, after the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. But while both
events are part of a broader recent movement raising awareness about police killings of unarmed
black men, the roots of unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore go back way further

Last August, during the unrest in Ferguson, Vox spoke with historian Heather Ann Thompson, a
professor at Temple University who writes extensively on 20th-century urban politics and criminal
justice and worked on the National Research Council's 2014 report on mass incarceration, to talk
about the tense and often hostile history between African Americans and the police in America.

Dara Lind: What does history teach us about what's going on in Ferguson?

Heather Ann Thompson: There are some locally important things about this, and there are some
nationally important things. There's been a lot of attention to the fact that St. Louis did not riot during
the 1960s, for example. But St. Louis has always had this very tortured racial history. In July of 1917,
there was one of the most brutal riots against African Americans there — scores and scores of white
folks attacking blacks simply for being employed in wartime industries. There were indiscriminate
attacks and, in effect, lynchings: beatings, hangings of black residents.

So the fact that St. Louis didn't erupt in the '60s is almost an anomaly or an outlying story. Because
St. Louis does have very tense race relations between whites and blacks, and also between the
police and the black community.

Nationally, it suggests that we haven't learned nearly enough from our history. Not just 1917, and all
the riots that happened in 1919, and 1921 — but, much more specifically, from the ‘60s. Because of
course, this is exactly the same issue that generated most of the rebellions of the 1960s. In 1964,
exactly 50 years ago, [unrest in] Philadelphia, Rochester, and Harlem were all touched off by the
killing of young African Americans. That's what touches off Harlem. It's the beating of a young black
man that touches off Rochester in '64. It's the rumor that a pregnant woman has been killed by the
police in Philadelphia in '64. So in some sense, my reaction to this is: of course. Because until you
fundamentally deal with this issue of police accountability in the black community and fair policing in
the black community, this is always a possibility.

DL: This continuity from the white attacks on black citizens after World War I, to the rioting of
disenfranchised African Americans in the 1960s, is interesting. Is there a relationship between
those two and between the violence of private white citizens and violence of police?
HT: On the surface they seem unrelated: you've got racist white citizens who are attacking blacks in
the streets, and then years or decades later, you have the police acting violently in the black
community.

In response to all those riots in the 1910s and 1920s, civil rights commissions were set up in cities,
and there was pressure on both local and federal governments to address white vigilantism and white
rioting against blacks. And while it was not particularly effective, it certainly had this censuring quality
to it. And then what historians would agree happened is that, in so many cities, the police became the
proxy for what the white community wants.

So one of the answers is that police became the front line of the white community — or, at least, the
most racially conservative white community. It's the police that are called out, for example, when
blacks try to integrate white neighborhoods. It's the police that become that body that defends whites
in their homes.

DL: How did this play out after the unrest that you mentioned?

HT: We start the war on crime in 1965, which, of course, is very much in response to these urban
rebellions. Because politicians decide that protests against things like police brutality are exactly the
same thing as crime — that this is disorderly. This is criminal.

And so, police are specifically charged with keeping order and with stopping crime, which has now
become synonymous with black behavior in the streets. The police, again, become that entity that
polices black boundaries. And I will tell you that one of the most striking things about the media
coverage of Ferguson is that they are absolutely doing what they did in the 1960s in terms of the
reporting: "This is all about the looters, this is all about black violence."

DL: It certainly seems that even before any looting actually happened in Ferguson, police were
anticipating that kind of thing.

HT: Any time that there is urban rebellion, the way that it is spun has everything to do with whether
it's granted legitimacy. Notably, when there was rioting in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, in
1963, and you saw the police with fire hoses and police dogs, it was very easy for white Northerners,
particularly the press, to report that for exactly what it was — which was police violence on black
citizens who were protesting. Everyone's very clear about that. Sheriff Bull Connor is a racist, the
police are racist, and that is why it is violent.

But the minute that these protests moved northward, the racial narrative was much more
uncomfortable. "Why in the world would blacks be protesting against us good-hearted white folks in
the North? And how dare they?" And what it means is that they were demanding too much, and that
they were in fact just looking for trouble. So that narrative of who gets to be a legitimate protester
shifts dramatically once protests move northward. It's all about violence, troublemaking, looting, and
so forth.
DL: What's the response to a narrative like that?

HT: Even in the 1960s, you've got the white and black liberals who are saying, "Calm down, calm
down, go home, stop this. Be peaceful." And the white community, white politicians are desperate for
these black politicians to have that kind of legitimacy: "Please go out and entice people to calm
down!"

"THEY DON'T HAVE RUBBER BULLETS. IT'S NEVER A

FAIR FIGHT."
Until black life is valued to the same extent white life is by members of law enforcement and by the
criminal-justice community, there will be this question of legitimacy of the police and their actions,
particularly among black folks who are routinely stopped. And then, people get angry. And then,
people do start throwing rocks and bottles. But make no mistake about it: they don't have rubber
bullets. It's never a fair fight.

DL: What we've heard from police officers is that the best way to prevent something like
what's happening in Ferguson is for residents to already trust the police, to have a good
relationship during so-called "normal" times — when there isn't an obvious incident. How has
that worked in the past?

HT: It doesn't work. It isn't working. It's the reason why immigrant communities, for example, are
terrified to call the police in times when police might be needed — for domestic violence, for times
when people have been robbed or been victimized —because the police might then round them up
and deport them. There's no legitimacy. The data is clear that the community knows, firsthand and
every day, that the level of policing of black communities is so disproportionate to both the lethalness
and the severity of crime that's taking place.

Most people are not being arrested for raping and robbing, murdering and stealing. It's this low level,
oppressive policing of communities on the basis of marijuana possession. Low-level drug busts.
Riding up on people. Throwing them against cars. Not because blacks do drugs more than whites,
not because they possess it more, but because that's where the policing is.

DL: How does that specifically relate to what happened in Ferguson?

HT: For Ferguson, it's much more about the fact that there is an absolute unwillingness to deal with
the core issues in American society about equality in the streets: [the principle that] a black citizen
and a white citizen really do have equal rights under the laws. Black citizens don't believe it. They
shouldn't believe it. It's not true that they have equal rights under the laws. It's not true that they have
the same assumptions of innocence. It's not true that they have the same assumptions of peaceful
countenance.
"ON SOME LEVEL, IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER WHAT
THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE"
And so, Ferguson happens. A kid gets killed. On some level, it doesn't even matter what the
circumstances are around the death. Because all that anyone needs to know is that here is yet
another young African-American kid who is going about his business and he's now dead. Let's
imagine that somehow he was hassling the police. Let's imagine that. Does that require a death
sentence? If the same thing had happened to a suburban teen kid in an elite suburb of St. Louis,
would they now be dead? Everybody knows that the answer is no. And thus, the rage.

DL: Some protesters in Ferguson are demanding that the police force should reflect the
community's demographics. How essential is it to make police forces more diverse?

HT: In Detroit, in Philadelphia, in Rochester, in Harlem, and all those places [in the 1960s], when you
have an all-white police force policing an all-black community, not only is there evidence that policing
does not happen justly, but you have the perception and the feeling that you have kind of an
occupying army in your community. I think it's kind of obvious why it's problematic.

"THE ACT OF POLICING PLACES THE POLICE IN

OPPOSITION TO THE COMMUNITY"
But people misunderstand what it takes to actually integrate a police department and what the impact
of that is. It's very difficult to integrate these departments. It took the rebellions of the ‘60s to put
pressure on city officials to do that in most cities. In Detroit, however, even though there was a
rebellion in '67, the police force does not really start to get integrated until 1973, when there's a black
mayor. Indeed, he gets elected in large part because he is promising, finally, to rein in the vigilante
forces in the police department and to finally integrate. It takes enormous effort to actually integrate a
police department. And what seems to have happened is that that has really fallen by the wayside.
Many affirmative-action clauses and statutes and pieces of city governance and university
governance and certainly private business governance have made it very easy to not abide by
integration rule now.

Even if police departments are integrated — certainly this has been proven in Detroit, and in other
cities where you have many, many more black police officers — the problem is that police are
charged with policing the community and particularly policing the poor black community. The act of
policing places the police in opposition to this community. Even if the officers are black, that does not
guarantee that there's going to be smooth police-community relations. Fundamentally, the problem is
that there is so much targeted policing in these neighborhoods.

DL: Have there been any genuinely good policing trends in the last 20 years, or anything that
police departments have developed to succeed in building trust with policed communities and
policing them less?
HT: I think community policing has merit. The whole origin of community policing, which really comes
out of the rebellions of the ‘60s, the pressure on departments to be representative of communities, to
actually get out of cars and walk the streets and actually be part of the community — I think that was
all good. l think it does have potential.

"THERE'S A MUCH BROADER SENSE OF JUSTICE

THAT NEEDS TO BE HAD"
But meanwhile, we started a war on crime where we invested every last dime we had in policing and
arresting and criminalizing behavior. Not just any behavior, but criminalizing black behavior. And once
every resource went to that, that's how we go from having a declining prison rate to being the biggest
prison populator of the entire globe. That happens because all of this attention and resources go to
policing black communities.

DL: Has history taught us anything about how communities can successfully demand
accountability from police after civil unrest?

HT: Unfortunately, everyone's immediate response is justice, meaning, "Let's arrest this cop. Let's put
this cop on trial." I think that there's a much broader sense of justice that needs to be had.

For example, there were these killings in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979, known colloquially as
the Greensboro Massacre. This was when the police and the Klan kind of clashed with
demonstrators, and people got killed, and it's really just a horrible situation.

They had a truth and reconciliation commission set up to deal with that. It's a really interesting story.
What it resulted in was just pages and pages and tons of documents about what the community felt,
and what the hell was going on, and who are these police, and what about the Klan?

Right now everybody's clamoring for this cop to stand trial and so forth. Is that going to heal? Is that
going to change the next kid who gets pulled over and shot? Probably not. The broader question of
how communities are policed and how black people are viewed and treated on the streets is fodder
for something much more significant that the community needs to engage in.

DOCUMENT 2:
Eugene "Bull" Connor was the Birmingham public safety commissioner whose
ideologies and orders were in direct opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.

Synopsis
Born on July 11, 1897, in Selma, Alabama, Eugene "Bull" Connor was a radio sportscaster before
entering state politics, and became Birmingham's public safety commissioner in 1937. With the
growing Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, Connor maintained racist policies that came to
a fruition with the jailing and televised water-hosing of peaceful protesters. He died in Birmingham on
March 10, 1973.

Background
Theophilus Eugene Connor was born on July 11, 1897, in Selma, Alabama. His mother died when he
was a child, with reports that he lived with relatives or traveled extensively across the United States
with his father, Hugh, who worked as a railroad dispatcher and telegrapher. The young Connor never
finished high school, though he did learn his father's trade. He later received the moniker "Bull" from
friends inspired by the cartoon character B.U.L. Conner.

Becomes Commissioner
Connor wed Beara Levin in 1920, with the two going on to have a daughter and move to the city of
Birmingham. Connor worked a number of jobs and then gained prominence as a radio sports
personality. He eventually turned to politics, serving on the Alabama state legislature in the mid-
1930s. In 1937, he became the city's public safety commissioner, winning multiple reelections to the
position throughout the 1940s and then running unsuccessfully for the governorship.

He was out of the commission's office for a time due to charges of law enforcement and marital
improprieties, though he was reelected to the position again in the latter half of the 1950s and early
'60s.

Racist Ideologies
A Southern Democrat who was a staunch proponent of racist social policies, Eugene Connor also
became a recurring national convention delegate. He was part of the faction who walked out of the
1948 convention in protest of civil rights platforms, with Connor thus becoming part of the Dixiecrat
movement.

Because of the vitriol of much of his public comments and resulting violence of his decrees, Connor
became a known foe in the Civil Rights Movement. He refused to provide police protection for the
Freedom Riders in 1961 upon word that they would be besieged upon their arrival in Birmingham.
Connor had also received entreaties from the community and human rights groups for an end to the
racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, with cases unsolved. And there are allegations that he
was part of a plan to murder one of the movement's most prominent leaders, minister Fred
Shuttlesworth.

Orders Attacks
Though his constituency had voted for him many times, Connor's stance earned major public
backlash. Moves were made to oust him from office by changing the structure of city government,
which was successfully done in 1962. But Connor countersued and thus continued to hold power.

As a result, during the 1963 spring campaign to end segregation in the city, hundreds of student
protesters were jailed. Connor eventually ordered authorities to besiege peaceful protesters, many of
whom were quite young, with water hoses and attack dogs. Images of this were broadcast around the
world and became history, thus accelerating integration in the city and galvanizing the likes of
President John F. Kennedy, helping to set into motion the creation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about these experiences in his work Why We Can't Wait (1964),
which includes his "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Writer Diane McWhorter also covered the period in
her book Carry Me Home(2001).

Heading toward the end of May, Connor was forced out of office by the state supreme court, though
he was soon elected to the public service commission, winning a second term as well. He died in
Birmingham on March 10, 1973, after suffering a stroke.

DOCUMENT 3:
History of Police Brutality in the US
Police brutality is the abuse of authority by the unwarranted infliction of excessive force by personnel involved
in various aspects of law enforcement while in performance of their official duties. The term is also applied to
abuses by corrections personnel in municipal, state and federal penal facilities including military prisons.
While the term police brutality is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm, it may also involve
psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics beyond the scope of officially sanctioned police
procedure. In the past those who engaged in police brutality may have acted with the implicit approval of the
local legal system, e.g. during the Civil Rights era. In the modern era individuals who engage in cases of police
brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers; in either case they
may perpetrate their actions under color of law, and more often than not engage in a subsequent cover-up of
their illegal activity.

The word "brutality" has several meanings; the sense used here (savage cruelty) was first used in 1633.[1] The
first known use of the term "police brutality" was in the New York Times in 1893,[2] describing a police officer's
beating of a civilian.
Efforts to combat police brutality focus on various aspects of the police subculture, and the aberrant
psychology which may manifest itself when individuals are placed in a position of absolute authority over
others.

CAUSES
Numerous doctrines, such as federalism, separation of powers, causation, deference, discretion, and burden of
proof have been cited as partial explanations for the judiciaries' fragmented pursuit of police misconduct.
However, there is also evidence that courts cannot or choose not to see systemic patterns in police brutality.[6]
Other factors that have been cited as encouraging police brutality include institutionalized systems of police
training, management, and culture; a criminal-justice system that discourages prosecutors from pursuing police
misconduct vigorously; a political system that responds more readily to police than to the residents of inner-city
and minority communities; and a racist political culture that fears crime and values tough policing more than it
values due process for all its citizens.[7] It is believed that without substantial social change, the control of
police deviance is improbable at best.[8]

In the United States, the passage of the Volstead Act (popularly known as the National Prohibition Act) in 1919
had a long-term negative impact on policing practices. By the mid-1920s, crime was growing dramatically in
response to the demand for illegal alcohol. Many law enforcement agencies stepped up the use of unlawful
practices. By the time of the Hoover administration (1929–1932), the issue had risen to national concern and a
National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement (popularly known as the Wickersham Commission)
was formed to look into the situation.[9] The resulting "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" (1931)
concluded that "[t]hethird degree—that is, the use of physical brutality, or other forms of cruelty, to obtain
involuntary confessions or admissions—is widespread".[10] In the years following the report, landmark legal
judgments such as Brown v. Mississippi helped cement a legal obligation to respect the due process clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment.[11]

Police brutality can be associated with racial profiling. Differences in race, religion, politics, or socioeconomic
status sometimes exist between police and the citizenry. Some police officers may view the population (or a
particular subset thereof) as generally deserving punishment. Portions of the population may perceive the
police to be oppressors. In addition, there is a perception that victims of police brutality often belong to
relatively powerless groups, such as racial or cultural minorities, the disabled, and the poor.

CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

The African-American Civil Rights Movement has been the target of numerous incidents of police brutality in its
struggle for justice and racial equality, notably during the Birmingham campaign of 1963–64 and during the
Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965. Media coverage of the brutality sparked national outrage, and public
sympathy for the movement grew rapidly as a result. Martin Luther King Jr. criticized police brutality in
speeches. During this time, the Black Panther Party (BPP) formed in response to police brutality from
disproportionately white police departments that were perceived as oppressing black communities.[13] The
conflict between the BPP and various police departments often resulted in violence with the deaths of 34
members of the BPP[14] and 15 police officers.[15]

In the United States, race and accusations of police brutality continue to be closely linked, and the
phenomenon has sparked a string of race riots over the years. Especially notable among these incidents was
the uprising caused by the arrest and beating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991 by officers of the Los Angeles
Police Department. The atmosphere was particularly volatile because the brutality had been videotaped by a
bystander and widely broadcast afterwards. When the four law enforcement officers charged with assault and
other violations were acquitted, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots broke out.

DOCUMENT 4:
Baltimore’s ‘Broken Relationship’ With
Police By SHERYL STOLBERG
APRIL 24, 2015 New York Times
BALTIMORE — For nearly two years, ever since her brother Tyrone West died after a struggle with
the police, a 35-year-old preschool teacher named Tawanda Jones has been in the streets here on
Wednesday nights, protesting. Her message: “We need killer cops in cellblocks.”

Though the officers involved in Mr. West’s July 2013 death have been cleared of wrongdoing, his case
and other police-involved killings here are woven into Baltimore’s psyche, part of what Mayor
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake calls the “broken relationship” between residents of this majority black city
and a police department with a history of aggressive, sometimes brutal behavior.

That history helps explain the long-simmering anger that boiled over this week with the death on
Sunday of Freddie Gray, 25, who suffered a severe spinal cord injury in police custody. Despite efforts
by city officials to improve relations — Mayor Rawlings-Blake, alarmed by wrongful-death lawsuits,
last year asked for a Justice Department review — thousands havestaged protests that are expected to
continue through the weekend.

The tensions date back at least to 1980, when the N.A.A.C.P. called for a federal investigation into
police brutality, and continued into the past decade with a crime-fighting strategy known as “zero-
tolerance policing” that led to mass arrests. Since 2010, according to the American Civil Liberties
Union of Maryland, just one Baltimore police officer has been prosecuted for killing a civilian: an off-
duty officer who was convicted of shooting a Marine Corps veteran outside a bar.

“This is part of a decades-long, growing frustration over the extent to which police in Baltimore have
adopted a highly militarized approach to policing residents of our city,” said Sonia Kumar, a staff
lawyer with the A.C.L.U. of Maryland, which brought a 2006 lawsuit to change some police practices
here.
On Friday, the police said Mr. Gray should have received medical treatment immediately at the scene
of the arrest, and confirmed he was riding in a van unbuckled, a violation of department policy.

“Over the years, we have had a number of incidents that have tarnished this badge and the reputation
of this department,” said Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, adding, “I have been a reform
commissioner.”

The commissioner said he had fired 50 officers for misconduct, reduced excessive force and improved
training since taking over the department in 2012. He dismissed calls for his resignation, saying,
“That’s not going to happen.”

Because there is no national database of police-involved killings, it is difficult to draw clear

conclusions about the use of deadly force by the Baltimore police. However, a New York Times
analysis of some Justice Department data suggests that Baltimore police officers have killed more
people than the police have in a number of other cities similar in size.

Baltimore police officers killed 127 people over two decades ending in 2012, with a marked uptick in
2007 and 2008, according to the F.B.I.’s voluntary survey of justifiable homicides by the police. The
police in Las Vegas, who cover that metropolitan area with a similar-size force, killed 100 people over
the same period.

In other similar cities that reported to the survey each year, including Oklahoma City, Memphis, and
Seattle — where the Justice Department found in 2011 a “pattern and practice of excessive force” —
none reported more than half the number in Baltimore.

Last year, The Baltimore Sun reported that taxpayers had paid $5.7 million since 2011 in judgments
or settlements in 102 lawsuits alleging police misconduct. A. Dwight Pettit, a lawyer who specializes in
police misconduct and represents Tyrone West’s family in a wrongful-death suit against the city, said
he had “20 open cases right now,” and was flooded with requests for representation.

Mr. Gray was not the first black man in Baltimore to emerge from a police van with a spinal cord
injury. Jeffrey Alston, who became paralyzed from the neck down after a van ride, settled for $6
million in 2004. The following year, Dondi Johnson, also paralyzed after a van ride, won a jury award
of $7.4 million, though it was reduced on appeal.

DOCUMENT 5:

Freddie Gray not the first to come

out of Baltimore police van with
serious injuries
When a handcuffed Freddie Gray was placed in a Baltimore police van on April 12, he
was talking and breathing. When the 25-year-old emerged, "he could not talk and he
could not breathe," according to one police official, and he died a week later of a spinal
injury.

But Gray is not the first person to come out of a Baltimore police wagon with serious
injuries.

Relatives of Dondi Johnson Sr., who was left a paraplegic after a 2005 police van ride,
won a $7.4 million verdict against police officers. A year earlier, Jeffrey Alston was
awarded $39 million by a jury after he became paralyzed from the neck down as the
result of a van ride. Others have also received payouts after filing lawsuits.

For some, such injuries have been inflicted by what is known as a "rough ride" — an
"unsanctioned technique" in which police vans are driven to cause "injury or pain" to
unbuckled, handcuffed detainees, former city police officer Charles J. Key testified as
an expert five years ago in a lawsuit over Johnson's subsequent death.

As daily protests continue in the streets of Baltimore, authorities are trying to

determine how Gray was injured, and their focus is on the 30-minute van ride that
followed his arrest. "It's clear what happened, happened inside the van," Mayor
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Monday at a news conference.

Christine Abbott, a 27-year-old assistant librarian at the Johns Hopkins University, is

suing city officers in federal court, alleging that she got such a ride in 2012. According
to the suit, officers cuffed Abbott's hands behind her back, threw her into a police van,
left her unbuckled and "maniacally drove" her to the Northern District police station,
"tossing [her] around the interior of the police van."

"They were braking really short so that I would slam against the wall, and they were
taking really wide, fast turns," Abbott said in an interview that mirrored allegations in
her lawsuit. "I couldn't brace myself. I was terrified."

The lawsuit states she suffered unspecified injuries from the arrest and the ride.
"You feel like a piece of cargo," she added. "You don't feel human."

The van's driver stated in a deposition that Abbott was not buckled into her seat belt,
but the officers have denied driving recklessly.

Police officials have not directly linked Gray's van ride to his injuries but did say that he
was not buckled in, as required by department policy. Medical experts say Gray could
have injured his spine when he was arrested and that injury could have worsened in the
van through even an inadvertent bump, turn or stop.

"From my work in the criminal defense arena over the past 40 years, I'm aware of this
term 'rough ride' and that it happens," said Byron L. Warnken, a University of
Baltimore law school professor who trains police officers in proper techniques for
dealing with people they stop. "How frequent it is, how abusive it is — I don't know."

But, he added, if a prisoner dies of a broken neck while in custody, the city has a
problem. "The force it takes to break a neck means wrongdoing, in my judgment."

Fractured neck, then death

The most sensational case in Baltimore involved Johnson, a 43-year-old plumber who
was arrested for public urination. He was handcuffed and placed in a transport van in
good health. He emerged a quadriplegic.
Before he died, he complained to his doctor that he was not buckled into his seat when
the police van "made a sharp turn," sending him "face first" into the interior of the van,
court records state. He was "violently thrown around the back of the vehicle as [police
officers] drove in an aggressive fashion, taking turns so as to injure [Johnson] who was
helplessly cuffed," the lawsuit stated.

Johnson, who suffered a fractured neck, died two weeks later of pneumonia caused by
his paralysis. His family sued, and a jury agreed that three officers were negligent in the
way they treated Johnson. The initial $7.4 million award, however, was eventually
reduced to $219,000 by Maryland's Court of Special Appeals because state law caps
such payouts.
In 1997, Alston became paralyzed from the neck down in a van after being arrested.
Alston said he told the officers he couldn't breathe, but they refused to give him an
inhaler for asthma.

Officers said the 32-year-old repeatedly rammed his head into the side of the van, freed
himself from a seat belt and thrashed some more.

Alston sued, and at the trial, Dr. Adrian Barbul, a Sinai Hospital trauma surgeon,
testified that Alston had no external head injuries when he was taken to the emergency
room.

The FBI is trying to get better data on police killings. Here's

what we know now. by VOX
1. The FBI will start requesting that local police departments send the agency
more information about crimes — which could result in more data about
when police officers use deadly force against citizens, USA Today reports.
2. The FBI will ask — but not require — local police departments to use a more
detailed, incident-based reporting system instead of simply reporting monthly
crime totals. This system has been available for years, but only about a third
of law enforcement agencies use it — and usually not ones in high-crime
areas, such as big cities.
3. The FBI's current information on police use of deadly force comes from a
separate supplemental report, which collects some more information but is
limited to homicides.
4. The supplemental report severely undercounts homicides — one study in
March 2015 estimated that more than half of people killed by police aren't
counted in the FBI's statistics.
In the wake of the killings of several unarmed black men by police in 2014 —and the
recent, high-profile shooting death of Walter Scott in South Carolina — there's been a
rush to figure out how often something like this happens in America. The problem, as
several writers have found, is that no one collects data that answers exactly that
question. There is no national database that police departments are required to submit
a record to when they complete an investigation after a police officer shoots a civilian.

VOX HAS OBTAINED FBI RECORDS THAT GO

BEYOND RAW NUMBERS AND REVEAL DETAILS
ABOUT VICTIMS AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF
THEIR DEATHS
The FBI does collect some data. Many have reported that the FBI's records say there
were 426 "felons killed by police" in 2012. In August 2014, Vox obtained FBI records
that go beyond the raw number of police-involved homicides and reveal details about
the victims and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The data offers an
important look at what the FBI knows about people killed by police in America.

The FBI data has tremendous limitations. It represents the minimum number of people
who were killed by police in 2012, and there's no way to know how many cases are left
out. But while it tells us just a little about how many people are killed by police, it tells
us more about who those people are, and what police say about why they were killed.
Furthermore, it hints at a theme that's woven through the events of 2014 in Ferguson,
Missouri, and other sites of protest across America: that the experience of dealing with
police in America is different for whites and nonwhites.

How the FBI collects data on officer-

involved homicides
The FBI collects records from local and state law enforcement on a monthly basis as
part of its Uniform Crime Reporting system, which is what the bureau uses to produce
official reports of crime rates in the US. (Participation is voluntary, but more than
18,000 agencies participate.) Those records tell the FBI how many crimes were
committed and what type, but it doesn't say much about the characteristics of the
victim, offender, or crime.
This is why, in April 2015, the FBI announced it was going to overhaul the Uniform
Crime Report system and ask police departments to make more use of an "incident-
based" reporting system that includes more of this information.

Currently, the Uniform Crime Report only categorizes an officer-involved homicide

differently from a normal homicide if the police officer killed a felon "in the line of duty."
The FBI calls this a type of "justifiable homicide." (This isn't the same definition that
states or criminal courts use — the standard that Darren Wilson will be held to for
killing Michael Brown, for example, is more subjective and complicated.) This data
doesn't encompass every time an officer kills someone, and it doesn't include any
information beyond a simple count of the number of justifiable homicides each year.

IT'S APPROPRIATE TO REGARD THE FBI'S DATA AS

A "MINIMUM"
But agencies can also submit an extra, optional report to the FBI when they turn in the
monthly crime data, called the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). That report
asks for demographic information about both the victims of homicides and the people
who committed them. It also asks agencies to select from a list of "circumstances" for
the homicide — including "felon killed by an officer." That's the same definition as
"justifiable homicide" in the full crime report. But the SHR allows the FBI to look at the
other data — including what the victim was doing and how he was killed — in cases
where a police department reports killing a felon.

The SHR isn't quite as detailed as the "incident-based" reporting system that the FBI is
now trying to encourage local law enforcement agencies to use. And it only includes
homicides, which means that it doesn't count any use-of-force cases where the civilian
didn't die.

The SHR isn't as good a dataset as the broader Uniform Crime Report, which more
agencies participate in, or other federal crime surveys. In the words of criminologist
David Klinger, it "undercounts by some unknown degree the number of people killed by
the cops in the United States." In fact, a March 2015 study estimated that the report
counts fewer than half of all police killings of civilians. But Klinger and other experts
feel it's appropriate to regard the SHR as a "minimum."
What we know about who was killed by
police in 2012
The FBI doesn't publish the full Supplementary Homicide Report records, but it
provided Vox with data that included every case of a "felon killed by a police officer" in
2012.

The dataset shows 426 homicide victims — in line with the 400 justifiable homicides
per year stat that USA Today and other sources have reported. However, it also
includes the number of officers who were involved in homicides of felons: 631 officers.
The number of officers is higher than the number of homicide victims because 121
victims, or 28.4 percent of all 2012 victims, were shot by multiple officers when they
died. About two-thirds were a single victim shot by a single officer; in 1 percent of
cases, a single officer shot multiple victims. (According to the 2012 data, only one of
the 426 justifiable homicides was not a shooting; it's listed as "death by physical
weapons.")

Clues as to when victims might have been

a threat to cops
The SHR data does not indicate whether victims were armed when they were killed by
police. But the ways the homicides are classified can offer clues as to how urgent or
dangerous a situation was when the shooting occurred.

There are six different subcategories of "felon killed by an officer." Three are cases
where police said the victim was attacking someone when he was killed. These reports
may or may not be accurate, and can boil down to an officer's word. (Based on
Wilson's account of the killing of Brown, for example, the Ferguson Police Department
could submit his death to the FBI as a "felon killed by an officer, attacking the officer.")
But they represent the cases in which the officers who killed someone claimed there
was an urgent safety need for them to do so.

The other three are cases where police say the victim "attempted flight" from police,
"was killed in the commission of a crime," or "resisted arrest." Those are all "justifiable"
homicides, according to the FBI's definition. But they're less clear in indicating whether
the officer's actions were necessary.